Washington, DC (July 31, 2018) – A member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee is calling out the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury for dodging questions about their activities involving America’s gold reserves.

In a letter dated July 27, Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) wrote to Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, after receiving perfunctory responses to his April 24th letter, noting “a few questions were either not addressed at all or not fully addressed.”

In particular, the Fed and Treasury would not articulate any U.S. policy toward gold and refused to comment on historical U.S. State Department documents pointing to a U.S. policy of “driving gold out of the world financial system in favor of the Federal Reserve Note or Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund.”

In his follow-up letter, Rep. Mooney provided evidence of involvement by the Exchange Stabilization Fund in the gold market and called attention to “the recent correlation of the gold price with the price of the Chinese yuan and the valuation of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.”

“Do these correlations reflect surreptitious intervention in the U.S. currency markets by China and currency manipulation by China?” Mooney asked.

Mooney also provided a 2009 letter from then Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh acknowledging the existence of Fed documents on gold swaps (while simultaneously refusing to provide them in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee).

Mooney asked Chairman Powell to reconcile the Marsh acknowledgement with his July 12, 2018, letter, including Powell’s assertion that “The Fed does not engage, nor has it ever engaged, in gold swaps.”

“This obfuscation by the Fed and the Treasury is unacceptable, and we are encouraged Congressman Mooney is calling them out on their game playing,” said Stefan Gleason, president of the Sound Money Defense League and Money Metals Exchange.

“The American people are entitled to transparency and accountability when it comes to the status and use of America’s gold reserves,” continued Gleason.

Rep. Mooney has emerged as one of the most vocal members of the U.S. House of Representatives on issues such as inflation and the central role of gold in restoring sound money, stable prices, and fiscal discipline.

“The purchasing power of our currency has fallen some 97% since Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, with an acceleration in the rate of decline occurring since the early 1970s when the final link to gold was severed,” wrote Mooney.

Congressman Mooney’s July 27 and April 24 letters – as well the responses from the Fed and Treasury to Mooney’s first letter – can be accessed here.

###

The Sound Money Defense League is a non-partisan national public policy group working on the state and federal level to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money.

Money Metals Exchange is a national precious metals company recently named “Best in the USA” by an independent global ratings group and serves nearly 100,000 investors in physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. For more information, please visit https://www.moneymetals.com/.

Jp Cortez is a graduate of Auburn University, a current law school student, and a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a Mises University alumnus. He is the Assistant Director of the Sound Money Defense League, a grassroots organization working to bring back gold and silver as America's constitutional money. Follow him on twitter, @JpCortez27

First-term Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California, a rising party star and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, launched her 2020 campaign for the White House on Monday by touting her background as a prosecutor.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration, where employees are going unpaid amid a partial government shutdown, said on Monday that unscheduled absences among U.S. airport security officers rose to a record 10 percent on Sunday as the shutdown reached its 31st day.

Winter winds brought extreme cold and ice-slicked roads to the Midwestern and Eastern United States on Monday, with the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday and an ongoing government shutdown allowing many to heed official advice to stay indoors.